It’s a Walmart love story.
Unlikely and wonderful. She has that pink ribbon just barely clinging to her few whispy baby hairs and still smells of the parmesan chicken she smeared all over the place during lunch.
Baggers and shoppers, grandmas and tired looking dads all smile at her.
She gums back at them, flashing two bottom teeth and we try to find Pete and the boys in the bedding aisle. I’ve been promising Jackson a down pillow for months and today we brave the Saturday crazy to find them. Somehow cowboy boots make it into the cart too.
And she watches it all and clings with tiny fingers to the front of the stroller tray and I wheel her around pillow pets and fish bowls. Fast, hurried but not lost. She knows I’m right behind her, the impetus in this rush.
When we’re slowing to look for the right toothpaste a woman tells me how beautiful her eyes are. I thank her and can’t help myself from agreeing. Beautiful and deep blue echoes of her grandpa’s – yes, I know.
And then we’re away.
With so much more I could say.
Her blue eyes are only the beginning I want to tell them. Her blue eyes are just the window into the wonder that is this daughter of mine. I could tell you, Walmart lady, of the early mornings when we just lie and look at each other – this baby girl who has my eyes.
We lie in bed and she lets one of her hands lazily trace the outline of my mouth, my eyebrow, my ear. We look and I see the echo of myself. I see the beginning. She pokes and pulls and I scrunch up eyelids and smile despite the insistence of tiny nails.
Then there are the days when she just crawls around the house in my tracks. Crawls and laughs and calls out to me and I talk back to her – we chat, my ten month old daughter and I. She is interested in me. As interested in me as I am in her. There is a smile that comes slowly and ends in dimples when I sneak up at her from behind corners.
Give us laundry or dishes or books or naptime and we share secrets.
There is a womanhood that connects us as powerful as any umbilical cord.
Tenderly.
Right there in the pinto beans aisle.
::
With my 2 little daughters, I completely relate to this… and your little angel is so lovely! :)
She has your smile too. So beautiful!
Sweet story & pictures – hold onto these day, enjoy the moments. thanks for sharing…
Beautiful post… I recently started following your blog and have been so blessed in doing so! Thank you for sharing about your sweet little girl! Reminds me of many stories I could tell about my darling two-year-old little sister. :-)
Blessings!
Rachel
oh, Lisa-Jo… so beautiful. A love story I too am watching unfold between my daughter and I…we wrote a new chapter in it last night over seal bark coughs, runny nose and soiled sheets…yet, I found it there last night. I would do anything for this daughter of mine. She is teaching me to be a woman just as much as I am her.
How precious this is; enjoy every single fleeting moment!
This is a beautifully written post. I can just feel the love and bond you have by reading about it.
Those blue eyes of hers are awesome…but those dimples???? All those beautiful dimples???? those are usually the first things I notice about babies. Finger dimples, feet dimples, cheek dimples, they’re all equally awesome to me. and she has cheeks full of them :)
So adorable, sweet and cuddly. Awesome story of love.
Oh, oh, oh. I am SO glad you put these pictures here at the blog. Is this not the most magical age? You have written about the depths and joy of this love story so beautifully – thank you. My ‘girls’ are now 44 and 42 – and I still feel that way about them. They have taught me more about myself and what it means to be a female than almost anything else in my life. (Love my son to pieces, too – but there are these lovely strands that somehow connect mothers and daughters. Sometimes they can strangle and they are anything but simple, but they are wondrous in all their manifestations.)
so beautiful….the bond between a mama and her child….they grow so fast…enjoy!
And you know what, Lisa-Jo? That will NEVER go away. My baby girl is 31 and has children of her own and she *still* follows me around the house and we look at each other and smile. And I do the same with my precious Mother. The dynmics change, but the love and the bond never do.
Such a sweet post and she is beautiful!
Precious. Lovely. Thank you for sharing!
She is so precious and your words are beautiful. Your post makes me long to pinch the cheeks of my grandson. Children are a gift from God.
Ahhhh… the best things really do happen in the pinto bean aisles, right?
I see you in her…
beautiful; both.